Disclaimer: Paramount owns all, but I doubt that they really want this little drabble.
Shards
The man before him was a psychological enigma. He wasn't suicidal, technically, but had neglected himself to the point where it threatened his life. The file was deceptively simple: after the death of his fiancée, the man recovered physically and returned to light duty at his insistence that he needed his work. His friends had been increasingly concerned about him, and one night one of them went to visit him, only to find him unconscious from lack of sleep, food, and general self-neglect. The trauma of losing his fiancée had been worse than anyone imagined. Starfleet had asked him to take the case, and every weekday he saw the man. It had been almost three weeks without any significant progress. Mostly he sat in silence.
Suddenly the man stood and walked to the vase with silk flowers that sat on the desk. In one swift movement the vase went crashing down to the floor. The man had never appeared to notice the vase before.
"How would you describe this vase now, Doctor?"
"Broken?"
"These shards- they're too dangerous as they are, broken pieces of something that used to be. So we try to piece them together, but what results is a weak imitation of the original."
Malcolm Reed looked at the shards of ceramic on the floor. "That's how I felt when Hoshi died."